Granite State Arts Academy

Saturday, March 25, they were a host school for the annual "NHETG Regional Theatre Festival," featuring one-act play performances by six NH high schools in a competitive event that builds towards state-level, and finally New-England-level festivals for the traveling high school shows. The NHETG (New Hampshire Educational Theatre Guild) is an organization of teachers, directors, students, and community members that has facilitated theatre festivals and theatre workshop events for high school students in New Hampshire for decades. As a 3-year-old public chartered high school, this event marked a wonderful opportunity for Granite State Arts Academy (GSAA) to join this long running tradition, make connections with other schools in the state, and raise awareness for what they stand for as an organization in the arts and education. GSAA offers all of the same core credits as a traditional high school, but also has a heavy focus on four art forms: theatre, dance, music, and visual arts.

At our regional festival this year, GSAA hosted Salem High School, Merrimack High School, John Stark Regional High School, Kearsarge Regional High School, and the Profile School for a total of six schools engaged in the theatrical fun. Students spent the day on Saturday setting up the technical elements of their shows, performing for an audience made up of their peers among the visiting schools, and engaging in structured discussion "forums" around the performances they had viewed. Schools performed a variety of theatrical pieces with a maximum of 40-minute run times. Some schools cut down longer pieces, while others selected short plays or wrote their own. Titles of the shows performed in part or whole include "She Kills Monsters" by Qui Nguyen (John Stark), "The Bald Soprano" by Eugene Ionesco (Merrimack), "Forest of Smiles" by its performers (Profile), "The 39 Steps" by Patrick Barlow (GSAA), "The Battle of Bull Run Always Makes Me Cry" by Carole Real (Salem), and "Awaiting Patients" by Christopher Cartwright (Kearsarge). At the end of the evening, the performances by Salem, John Stark, and GSAA were selected by the adjudicators to move on to the state level of the festival, which will be on April 7th and 8th at Gilford High School, and will additionally feature shows drawn from the 3 other regional festivals from around the state this March.